Five climbers die on France's Mont Blanc

Death toll on Mont Blanc hits 14 in a month after five French climbers and
their guide slide to their deaths in among the worst tragedies on the
dangerous peak in years

There have been several deaths this climbing season on the mountainPhoto: Getty Images/AFP

By Henry Samuel, Paris

11:42AM BST 13 Aug 2014

Five French climbers and their guide slid to their deaths on Wednesday on Mont Blanc in one of the worst disasters on Europe's highest mountain in recent years.

The tragedy brings the death toll on the notoriously dangerous massif, which has been plagued by bad weather this summer, to 14 in the past month.

Four men and one woman, aged between 27 and 45, had set out with their 42-year old guide on Tuesday morning for an expedition organised by France's national association for outdoor sports, UCPA.

The group had intended to reach the Aiguille d'Argentière peak on the Mont Blanc massif, which stands at 3,902 metres (12,802 feet).

They had left during a “break” in bad weather on a relatively easy ascent via the Flèche Rousse ridge. But poor conditions swiftly set in and the climbers, all with a "good technical level", were reported missing after they failed to show up at their shelter.

The caretaker of the Argentière refuge, Fred Laurenzio, said the group and their experienced guide had left at 4am “in very good weather conditions”.

By 5pm, however, he alerted mountain rescue services in Chamonix who were unable to reach the missing climbers that night as the summit was shrouded in snowfall and mist.

They finally located five bodies on Wednesday morning at between 3,500 and 3,700 metres. Gendarmes said they had fallen 250 metres down a 40 degrees slope on the Glacier du Milieu.

The guide's “lifeless” body was later found in a crevasse, according to the Haute-Savoie state prefect.

The mountain rescue gendarmes, or PGHM, of Chamonix said the group had died after slipping and making a "violent fall of 250m" onto a glacial rock bar where several previous accidents have occurred.

While mountain experts said the accident area posed few technical difficulties, it is in a zone with no mobile reception.

“A small problem can become a very big problem as you need to go down to the refuge on your own steam to seek help,” said Mr Laurenzio.

“We don’t know what their problem was here, but it forced them to try and descend by night," he told AFP.

The accident is the latest in a string of deaths on the mountain in the past month. It comes amid fears among professional guides that Mont Blanc is fast becoming an “amusement park” for climbers often ill-equipped and unaware of the risks involved.

Two Belgians were found dead on August 2 and six climbers died between July 15 and 30 - two Irish, two Finns, a German and a French person.

An American climber sparked outrage earlier this month when he tried to climb the mountain with his nine-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter and got caught in an avalanche.

Patrick Sweeney and his children escaped uninjured, but video footage of the incident in a treacherous passage known as “death gully” caused an outcry when it was broadcast on top US TV channels last month.

Some 74 fatalities were recorded along this corridor between 1990 and 2011.

Last week, there was fresh outcry when an Austrian sought to climb the mountain with his five-year-old son, only to be talked out of it by gendarmes.

That led Jean-Marc Peillex, the mayor of nearby Saint-Gervais, to warn that Mont Blanc is increasingly being mistaken for an “amusement park”.

On Wednesday, he told The Telegraph: “This has been one of the worst years for Mont Blanc in three ways – the number of deaths, the way it is being treated like a Disney theme park and the poor weather conditions.”

“This accident is a harsh reminder that the mountain dictates its own laws.”

The worst single death toll from an accident on Mont Blanc in recent times came in July 2012, when three Britons were among nine climbers killed in an avalanche.

Eight climbers lost their lives in late August 2008.

Dozens of climbers die every year among the 20,000 or so who attempt the ascent, which is deceptively treacherous due to fast changing weather conditions, overcrowding and falling rocks near the summit.

Commercial considerations are piling “growing pressure on everyone to get up there as soon as there is the slightest break in the bad weather, despite the risks,” warned Mr Peillex.